Study Of Xiao Qian's Self Translation Activity During His Sojourn In England (1939-1946) Under The Perspective Of Ideology

Self translation, as a special translation activity, is receiving more and more attentions from the scholars in translation field in recent years. As the author and translator are combined into one in the self translation, the translation produced presents higher flexibility compared to other translation texts. However, the relevant researches mostly only focus on the specificity of the self translation, and attribute its higher degree of flexibility to the higher subjectivity of the self translator. This thesis, with the self translated short stories and essays by Xiao Qian during his seven-year sojourn in England(1939-1946) as the research object, tries to explore the influence of the ideology under World War II context on Xiao Qian's self translation activity.This thesis mainly adopts the methods of historical material arrangement and specific case analysis to investigate the objective factors in Xiao Qian's self translation, the seemingly totally subjective activity, i.e. his self translation under the influence of the war-specific context at that time, mainly including the influence on the self translation motivation, selection of source texts and the self translation strategies. The major findings of this thesis include: the self translation motivation of Xiao Qian is his even more intense wish to spread the modernization process and the new literature of China under the historical background of the Second World War and with the false understanding of the westerners to see China as an antique shop; the self translation texts selected by Xiao Qian are on one hand about the disasters suffered by the nation in a large context and on the other hand the sufferings of the poor and the weak in a small context, which just reflect the reality faced by people in war; the special self translation strategies adopted by Xiao Qian in self translation, including large degrees of omission, addition and replacement, etc., generally achieve three effects after summarization, i.e. firstly reducing the reading barriers for target readers, secondly strengthening the fighting spirit, and thirdly safeguarding the image of China, which are also in conformity with the war-specific ideology at that time. Therefore, the thesis thinks that, the self translation activity of Xiao Qian in 1940 s and the specialty of its self translation work are subject to the influence of the ideology at that time.